Milos Teodosic, formerly of the Los Angeles Clippers
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RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL - AUGUST 19: Milos Teodosic #4 of Serbia walks to the bench with a towel on his head during the Men's Semifinal match against Australia on Day 14 of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games at Carioca Arena 1 on August 19, 2016 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. (Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)
Reports this week out of Serbia state that Milos Teodosic, national team mainstay and EuroLeague icon who briefly spent some time with the Los Angeles Clippers, will retire at the end of this season.
Teodosic is currently a member of the playing staff of Serbian team, Crvena Zvezda, with whom he has played the last two seasons and whom he is expected to join the front office of after this season. Previously, the 38-year-old point guard has spent time with Virtus Bologna in Italy, Olympiakos in Greece and six seasons with CSKA Moscow in Russia, with a two-year stint on American shores in between.
After years of speculation, Teodosic finally came to the NBA in the summer of 2017 when he signed a two-year, $12.3 million deal with the Clippers. At the time, with the NBA’s salary cap far smaller than it is now, that represented most of the value of a mid-level exception (which in the 2017-18 season was worth $8,406,000).
The value of the MLE is tied to the average NBA salary. It follows, then, that signing to the MLE means signing an average player. And in his short-lived NBA career, Teodosic was certainly that.
Teodosic’s Short, Truncated, Too-Late Clippers Career
In his first NBA season, Teodosic appeared in 45 games with 36 starts, and showed his offensive skills. He averaged 9.5 points and 4.6 assists per game, shooting 37.9% from three-point range and committing only 2.2 turnovers a night, on a Clippers that went 42-40 and finished tenth in the West. He was OK; they were OK. Average, if you will.
Teodosic’s second NBA season, though, was not that. Appearing in only 15 games, Teodosic was out of the rotation due to both injury and the arrival of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who hit the ground running with 73 starts as a rookie on his way to becoming this year’s NBA MVP. Teodosic played only 150 minutes all season – for context, Jerome Robinson, a name you are currently Googling, played 320 – and then returned to Europe with Virtus.
Given that he did not join the NBA until age 30, it is hard to know what kind of impact Teodosic might have had on American soil had he spent his prime years there and had his basketball education in that style of play. But what we do know for sure is that in the EuroLeague, Teodosic was anything but average.
One Of The EuroLeague Greats
Across his EuroLeague career – and in particular, the six years he spent with CSKA Moscow between 2011 and 2017 – Teodosic was a EuroLeague star. His myriad individual accolades included three All-EuroLeague First Team awards, three Second Team awards, two assist leader titles and an MVP award.
All of this came before his time with the Clippers, in large part because Teodosic was not incentivised to leave. While EuroLeague salaries do not compete with top-tier NBA ones – something which was true back then, and which is really true now – CSKA willingly spent much more than they earned in revenue, and Teodosic was paid handsomely for his services.
Furthermore, stardom beats forgettableness. In the EuroLeague, in his home continent, playing the brand of basketball he knows best and where his defensive lapses mattered less given his heightened offensive importance, Teodosic was happier. He liked playing in Europe, his CSKA team was good, and he was one of the best players in the competition. To give that up to ride NBA benches, as he did once Gilgeous-Alexander arrived, was not a tempting offer.
Teodosic, like so many EuroLeague MVPs (especially guards), did not succeed in the NBA, not through a lack of talent but through a lack of need to succeed. He retires having won everything there is to win in Europe, but with his NBA career with the Clippers serving as little more than a box-ticking exercise on his CV. And maybe that is the way it should always have been.